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• Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns: Feeling the Love after Launch

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn the first video by the Oracle Applications User Experience team on the Oracle Partner Network, Vice President Jeremy Ashley said that Oracle is looking to expand the ecosystem of support for Oracle’s applications customers as they begin to assess their investment and adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle has made a massive investment to maintain the benefits of the Fusion Applications User Experience. This summer, the Applications User Experience team released the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns.Design patterns help create consistent experiences across devices.The launch has been very well received:Angelo Santagata, Senior Principal Technologist and Fusion Middleware evangelist for Oracle,  wrote this to the system integrator community: “The web site is the result of many years of Oracle R&D into user interface design for Fusion Applications and features a really cool web app which allows you to visualise the UI components in action.”  Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, Application Development Framework (ADF) said: “It’s a science I don't understand, but now I don't have to ... Now you can learn from the UX experience of Fusion Applications.”Frank Nimphius, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle (ADF) wrote about the launch of the design patterns for the ADF Code Corner, and Jürgen Kress, Senior Manager EMEA Alliances & Channels for Fusion MiddleWare and Service Oriented Architecture, (SOA), shared the news with his Partner Community. Oracle Twitter followers also helped spread the message about the design patterns launch: ?@bex – Brian Huff, founder and Chief Software Architect for Bezzotech, and Oracle ACE Director:“Nifty! The Oracle Fusion UX team just released new ADF design patterns.”@maiko_rocha, Maiko Rocha, Oracle Consulting Solutions Architect and Oracle FMW engineer: “Haven't seen any other vendor offer such comprehensive UX Design Patterns catalog for free!”@zirous_chad, Chad Thompson, Senior Solutions Architect for Zirous, Inc. and ADF Developer:Wow - @ultan and company did a great job with the Fusion UX PatternsWhat is a user experience design pattern?A user experience design pattern is a re-usable, usability tested functional blueprint for a particular user experience.  Some examples are guided processes, shopping carts, and search and search results.  Ultan O’Broin discusses the top design patterns every developer should know.The patterns that were just released are based on thousands of hours of end-user field studies, state-of-the-art user interface assessments, and usability testing.  To be clear, these are functional design patterns, not technical design patterns that developers may be used to working with.  Because we know there is a gap, we are putting together some training that will help close that gap.Who should care?This is an offering targeted primarily at Application Development Framework (ADF) developers. If you are faced with the following questions regarding Fusion Applications, you will want to know and learn more:•    How do I build something that looks like Fusion Applications?•    How do I build a next-generation application?•    How do I extend a Fusion Application and maintain the user experience?•    I don’t want to re-invent the wheel on the user interface, so where do I start?•    I need to build something that will eventually co-exist with Fusion Applications. How do I do that?These questions are relevant to partners with an ADF competency, individual practitioners, or small consultancies with an ADF specialization, and customers who are trying to shift their IT staff over to supporting Fusion Applications.Where you can find out more?OnlineOur Fusion User Experience design patterns maven is Ultan O’Broin. The Oracle Partner Network is helping our team bring this first e-seminar to you in order to go into a more detail on what this means and how to take advantage of it:? Webinar: Build a Better User Experience with Oracle: Oracle Fusion Applications Functional Design PatternsSept 20, 2012 , 10:30am-11:30am PacificDial-In:  1. 877-664-9137 / Passcode 102546?International:  706-634-9619  http://www.intercall.com/national/oracleuniversity/gdnam.htmlAccess the Live Event Or Via Webconference Access http://ouweb.webex.com  ?and enter this session number: 598036234At a Usergroup eventThe Fusion User Experience Advocates (FXA) are also going to be getting some deep-dive training on this content and can share it with local user groups.At OpenWorld Ultan O’Broin               Chris MuirIf you will be at OpenWorld this year, our own Ultan O’Broin will be visiting the ADF demopod to say hello, thanks to Shay Shmeltzer, Senior Group Manager for ADF outbound communication and at the OTN lounge: Monday 10-10:45, Tuesday 2:15-2:45, Wednesday 2:15-3:30 ?  Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF,  Moscone South, Right - S-207? “ADF Meet and Greett”, OTN Lounge, Wednesday 4:30 And I cannot talk about OpenWorld and ADF without mentioning Chris Muir’s ADF EMG event: the Year After the Year Of the ADF Developer – Sunday, Sept 30 of OpenWorld. Chris has played host to Ultan and the Applications user experience message for his online community and is now a seasoned UX expert.Expect to see additional announcements about expanded and training on similar topics in the future.

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• Oracle’s Web Experience Management

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Today’s guest post on Oracle’s Web Experience Management comes from a member of our WebCenter Evangelist team, Noël Jaffré, a Principal Technologist based in France.Oracle’s Web Experience Management (WEM) solution enables organizations to optimize the online channel for driving marketing and customer experience management success. It empowers business users to manage the web presence and create rich and engaging online experiences for customers and prospects. Oracle's WEM platform provides a framework to simplify the integration of Oracle, third-party and custom-built applications. This framework essentially allows the creation and integration of applications using one single business interface called the WEM interface. It includes the following: Single sign-on access control for all integrated applications using the Central Authentication Service (CAS) component. A single centralized administration window for user, role, and native applications management including site management. Community server management, gadget server management as well as management for partner integrated technologies. A Representational State Transfer (REST) API for accessing WebCenter Sites data. REST services are supported on both Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle WebCenter Sites Satellite Server to leverage the satellite server cache. All REST requests are cached for web consuming applications as well for the high performance delivery of native applications on the mobile channel. Oracle WebCenter Sites’ Web Experience Management environment enables organizations to deliver a compelling online experience to customers by simplifying the deployment and management of sophisticated and engaging websites. The WebCenter Sites platform automates the entire process of managing web content including: Authoring:  Business users can easily contribute and manage web content in real-time, with intuitive interfaces and drag-and-drop content authoring and layout capabilities designed for the non-technical user. Contextual Content Targeting: Marketers are empowered to create and manage targeted campaigns with relevant recommendations and promotions based on the context of the session of the visitor such as his or her navigation history, user profile, language, location or other information shared during the visitor session. Content Publishing and Deployment: It offers advanced multi-site management capabilities for departmental or regional sites, as well as strong multi-lingual and multi-locale content management. The remote satellite server caching infrastructure provides high-performance, distributed caching, tuned to deliver high-volume, targeted and multi-lingual sites. Analytics and Optimization: Business users and marketers have the ability to measure the effectiveness of their online content and campaigns at a granular level. Editors and marketers can immediately determine whether a given article or promotion is relevant to a particular customer segment. User-generated Content: Marketers can enable blogs, comments, rating and reviews on the website.  All comments and reviews posted to the website can be moderated from the administrator interface either manually or automatically using filters, whitelists, blacklists or community based moderation. Personalized Gadget Dashboards:  Site managers can deploy gadgets, small applications using web content, individually or as part of dashboards containing multiple gadgets.  These gadget dashboards enable site visitors to create their own “MyPage” on a given site where they can select and customize the gadgets that the site administrator has made available.  Any gadget that conforms to the iGoogle/OpenSocial standard can be made available to site visitors, or they can be created within the WEM interface. Oracle's WEM platform also provides a unique environment for the delivery of a rich, multichannel online experience for site visitors through its advanced management modules for mobile. With Oracle’s WEM solution, it’s easy to control branding and deliver a consistent message while repurposing web content for publication to mobile devices, kiosks and much more. This distinctive approach provides: HTML5 Delivery: HTML5 delivery which includes native support for adaptive design that responds to the user’s computer screen resolution and orientation. The approach is less driven by the particular hardware and more driven by the user’s interactions with the device. In other words, this approach takes both the screen interactions (either cursor or touch) and screen sizes and orientation into consideration. A Unique Native Mobile Extension Environment for Contributors: From the WEM interface, a contributor can directly manage their mobile channel, using the tooling already in place for driving the traditional web presence. This includes the mobile presentation, as well as mobile insite editing, drag and drop page layout, and in-context recommendations and personalization. Optimized REST APIs for High Performance Content Delivery on Native Mobile Device Applications: WebCenter Sites’ REST API uses the underlying HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to interact with resources. Resources support two types of input and output formats -- XML and JSON. REST calls are customizable to optimize the interactions between the content repositories and the client applications. Caching is essential to decrease network loads and improve overall reliability and usability of the applications and user interactions. REST results are cached through the highly efficient Oracle WebCenter Sites caching architecture.

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• SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff)

  - by jamiet

  Recently I noticed a tweet from notable SQL Server author and community dude-at-large Steve Jones in which he asked how many SQL Server developers were putting their SQL Server source code (i.e. DDL) under source control (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact tweet and Twitter’s search functionality is useless). The question surprised me slightly as I thought a more pertinent question would be “how many SQL Server developers are not using source control?” because I have been doing just that for many years now and I simply assumed that use of source control is a given in this day and age. Then I started thinking about it. “Perhaps I’m wrong” I pondered, “perhaps the SQL Server folks that do use source control in their day-to-day jobs are in the minority”. So, dear reader, I’m interested to know a little bit more about your use of source control. Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? To encourage you to contribute I have five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect to give away to what I consider to be the five best replies (“best” is totally subjective of course but this is my blog so my decision is final ), if you want to be considered don’t forget to leave contact details; email address, Twitter handle or similar will do. To start you off and to perhaps get the brain cells whirring, here are my answers to the questions above: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? As I think I’ve already said…yes. Always. If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? I move around a lot between many clients so it changes on a fairly regular basis; my current client uses Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) and as part of a separate project is trialing the use of Team Foundation Service. I have used SVN extensively in the past which I am a fan of (I generally prefer it to TFS) and am trying to get my head around Git by using it for ObjectStorageHelper. What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? On my current project, Team Explorer. In the past I have used Tortoise to connect to SVN. Why did you make those particular software choices? I generally use whatever the client uses and given that I work with SQL Server I find that the majority of my clients use TFS, I guess simply because they are Microsoft development shops. Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? Not an anecdote as such but I am going to share some frustrations about TFS. In many ways TFS is a great product because it integrates many separate functions (source control, work item tracking, build agents) into one whole and I’m firmly of the opinion that that is a good thing if for no reason other than being able to associate your check-ins with a work-item. However, like many people there are aspects to TFS source control that annoy me day-in, day-out. Chief among them has to be the fact that it uses a file’s read-only property to determine if a file should be checked-out or not and, if it determines that it should, it will happily do that check-out on your behalf without you even asking it to. I didn’t realise how ridiculous this was until I first used SVN about three years ago – with SVN you make any changes you wish and then use your source control client to determine which files have changed and thus be checked-in; the notion of “check-out” doesn’t even exist. That sounds like a small thing but you don’t realise how liberating it is until you actually start working that way. Hoping to hear some more anecdotes and opinions in the comments. Remember….free software is up for grabs! @jamiet 

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• Cloud Computing Architecture Patterns: Don’t Focus on the Client

  - by BuckWoody

  Normally I try to put topics in the positive in other words "Do this" not "Don't do that". Sometimes its clearer to focus on what *not* to do. Popular development processes often start with screen mockups, or user input descriptions. In a scale-out pattern like Cloud Computing on Windows Azure, that's the wrong place to start. Start with the Data    Instead, I recommend that you start with the data that a process requires. That data might be temporary or persisted, but starting with the data and its requirements helps to define not only the storage engine you need but also drives everything from security to the integrity of the application. For instance, assume the requirements show that the user must enter their phone number, and that this datum is used in a contact management system further down the application chain. For that datum, you can determine what data type you need (U.S. only or International?) the security requirements, whether it needs ACID compliance, how it will be searched, indexed and so on. From one small data point you can extrapolate out your options for storing and processing the data. Here's the interesting part, which begins to break the patterns that we've used for decades: all of the data doesn't have the same requirements. The phone number might be best suited for a list, or an element, or a string, with either BASE or ACID requirements, based on how it is used. That means we don't have to dump everything into XML, an RDBMS, a NoSQL engine, or a flat file exclusively. In fact, one record might use all of those depending on the use-case requirements. Next Is Data Management  With the data defined, we can move on to how to store the data. Again, the requirements now dictate whether we need a full relational calculus or set-based operations, or we can choose another method based on the requirements for the data. And breaking another pattern its OK to store in more than once, in more than one location. We do this all the time for reporting systems and Business Intelligence systems, so this is a pattern we need to think about even for OLTP data. Move to Data Transport How does the data get around? We can use a connection-based method, sending the data along a transport to the storage engine, but in some cases we may want to use a cache, a queue, the Service Bus, or Complex Event Processing. Finally, Data Processing Most RDBMS engines, NoSQL, and certainly Big Data engines not only store data, but can process and manipulate it as well. Its doubtful that you'll calculate that phone number right? Well, if you're the phone company, you most certainly will. And so we see that even once we've chosen the data type, storage and engine, the same element can have different computing requirements based on how it is used. Sure, We Need A Front-End At Some Point Not all data is entered by human hands in fact most data isn't. We don't really need a Graphical User Interface (GUI) we need some way for a GUI to get data into and out of the systems listed earlier.   But when we do need to allow users to enter or examine data, that should be left to the GUI that best fits the device the user has. Ever tried to use an application designed for a web browser on a phone? Or one designed for a tablet on a phone? Its usually quite painful. The siren song of "We'll just write one interface for all devices" is strong, and has beguiled many an unsuspecting architect. But they just don't work out.   Instead, focus on the data, its transport and processing. Create API calls or a message system that allows for resilient transport to the device or interface, and let it do what it does best. References Microsoft Architecture Journal:   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb410935.aspx Patterns and Practices:   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff921345.aspx Windows Azure iOS, Android, Windows 8 Mobile Devices SDK: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-ios/ Windows Azure Facebook SDK: http://ntotten.com/2013/03/14/using-windows-azure-mobile-services-with-the-facebook-sdk-for-windows-phone/

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• Profit's COLLABORATE 10 Session Selections

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  COLLABORATE 2010 is a mere 11 days away (thanks for the reminder @ocp_advisor). Every year I publish my a list of the sessions I think reflect some of the more interesting people/trends in enterprise IT. I should be at all of these sessions, so drop by for a chat--I'll be the guy tapping out emails on my iPad... Monday, April 19 9:15 a.m. - Keynote: Transforming Customer Value, Delivering Highest Customer Service Location: Keynote Hall I never miss Charles Phillips when he speaks--it's one of the best opportunities to get an update on Oracle product developments and strategy. And there's certainly occasion for an update: this will be Phillips' first big presentation since the Oracle + Sun Strategy Update in late January. Phillips is appearing with Oracle Executive Vice President of Development Thomas Kurian which means there should be some excellent information about how customers are using Oracle's complete software and hardware stack to address enterprise IT challenges. The session should provide some excellent context for the rest of the week's session...don't miss it. 10:45 a.m. - Oracle Fusion Applications: Functional Overview Location: South Seas FI met Basheer Khan at COLLABORATE 08 in Denver and have followed his work ever since. He's a former member of the OAUG Board of Directors, an Oracle ACE, and a charismatic enterprise IT expert. Having worked with the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, Basheer should have some fascinating insights to share about the features and interface of Oracle's Fusine Applications. This session, along with Nadia Bendjedou's "10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation Applications" (on Tuesday, April 20 8:00 a.m. in room 3662) should give attendees the update they need about Oracle's next-generation applications.   1:15p.m. - E-Business Suite in the Amazon Cloud Location: South Seas HI did my first full-fledged cloud computing coverage at last year's COLLABORATE show (check out my interview with Oracle's Bill Hodak), where I first learned about Amazon's EC2 offering. I've since talked with several people who have provisioned server space on Amazon's cloud with great results. So I'm looking forward to watching the audience configure an instance of the Oracle E-Business Suite release 12 on the cloud while Chuck Edwards from Blue Gecko drives. This session should take some of the mist and vapor out of the cloud conversation.2:30 p.m. - "Zero Sign-on" to EBS - Enabling 96000 Users to Login to EBS Without User Maintenance Location: South Seas HI'll be sitting tight in South Seas H for the next session on Monday where Doug Pepka, a ten-year veteran of communications giant Comcast, will be walking attendees through a massive single sign-on (SSO) project across the enterprise. I'm working on a story about SSO for the August issue of Profit, so this session has real practical value to me. Plus the proliferation of user account logins--both personal and professional--makes this a critical usability/change management issue for IT leaders planning for successful long-term IT implementations.   Tuesday 8:00 am  - Information Architecture for Men in Kilts Location: SURF AGetting to a 8:00 a.m. presentation is a tall order in Las Vegas, but presenter Billy Cripe will make it worth your effort. Not only is the title of this session great, but the content should appeal to any IT strategist looking to push the limits of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Cripe is a product management director of Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise Content Management at Oracle, author of Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0, and a prolific blogger--he knows how information architecture is critical to and enterprise 2.0 implementation.    10:30a.m. - Oracle Virtualization: From Desktop to Data Center Location: REEF FData center virtualization is still one of the best ways to reduce the cost of running enterprise IT. With the addition of Sun products, Oracle has the industry's most comprehensive virtualization portfolio. I must admit, I'm no expert in this subject. So I'm looking forward to Monica Kumar's presentation so I can get up to speed.   Wednesday 8:00 a.m. - The Art of the Steal Location: Mandalay Bay Ballroom JMany will know Frank Abagnale from Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Catch Me if You Can." The one-time con man and international fugitive who swindled $2.5 million in forged checks went on to help U.S. federal officials investigate fraud cases. Now the CEO of Abagnale and Associates, he has become an invaluable source to the business world on the subject of fraud and fraud protection. With identity theft and digital fraud still on the rise, this session should be an entertaining, and sobering, education on the threats facing businesses and customers around the world. A great way to start Wednesday.1:00 p.m. - Google Wave: Will it replace e-mail as we know it today? Location: SURF EBy many assessments (my own included), Google Wave is a bit of an open collaboration failure. It may seem like an odd reason for me to be excited about this session, but I'm looking forward to the chance to revisit the technology. Also, this is a great case study in connecting free, available Internet tools to existing enterprise computing environments--an issue that IT strategists must contend with as workers spreads out and choose their own productivity tools.  

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 3: Windows Defender and a Malware-Free System

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson we are going to talk about one of the most confusing security products that are bundled with Windows: Windows Defender. In the past, this product has had a bad reputation and for good reason – it was very limited in its capacity to protect your computer from real-world malware. However, the latest version included in Windows 8.x operating systems is much different than in the past and it provides real protection to its users. The nice thing about Windows Defender in its current incarnation, is that it protects your system from the start, so there are never gaps in coverage. We will start this lesson by explaining what Windows Defender is in Windows 7 and Vista versus what it is in Windows 8, and what product to use if you are using an earlier version. We next will explore how to use Windows Defender, how to improve its default settings, and how to deal with the alerts that it displays. As you will see, Windows Defender will have you using its list of quarantined items a lot more often than other security products. This is why we will explain in detail how to work with it and remove malware for good or restore those items that are only false alarms. Lastly, you will learn how to turn off Windows Defender if you no longer want to use it and you prefer a third-party security product in its place and then how to enable it back, if you have changed your mind about using it. Upon completion, you should have a thorough understanding of your system’s default anti-malware options, or how to protect your system expeditiously. What is Windows Defender? Unfortunately there is no one clear answer to this question because of the confusing way Microsoft has chosen to name its security products. Windows Defender is a different product, depending on the Windows operating system you are using. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, then Windows Defender is a security tool that protects your computer from spyware. This but one form of malware made out of tools and applications that monitor your movements on the Internet or the activities you make on your computer. Spyware tends to send the information that is collected to a remote server and it is later used in all kinds of malicious purposes, from displaying advertising you don’t want, to using your personal data, etc. However, there are many other types of malware on the Internet and this version of Windows Defender is not able to protect users from any of them. That’s why, if you are using Windows 7 or earlier, we strongly recommend that you disable Windows Defender and install a more complete security product like Microsoft Security Essentials, or third-party security products from specialized security vendors. If you use Windows 8.x operating systems, then Windows Defender is the same thing as Microsoft Security Essentials: a decent security product that protects your computer in-real time from viruses and spyware. The fact that this product protects your computer also from viruses, not just from spyware, makes a huge difference. If you don’t want to pay for security products, Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) are good alternatives. Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials are the same product, only their name is different. In this lesson, we will use the Windows Defender version from Windows 8.x but our instructions apply also to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you want to download Microsoft Security Essentials and try it out, we recommend you to use this page: Download Microsoft Security Essentials. There you will find both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of this product as well versions in multiple languages. How to Use and Configure Windows Defender Using Windows Defender (MSE) is very easy to use. To start, search for “defender” on the Windows 8.x Start screen and click or tap the “Windows Defender” search result. In Windows 7, search for “security” in the Start Menu search box and click “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Windows Defender has four tabs which give you access to the following tools and options: Home – here you can view the security status of your system. If everything is alright, then it will be colored in green. If there are some warnings to consider, then it will be colored in yellow, and if there are threats that must be dealt with, everything will be colored in red. On the right side of the “Home” tab you will find options for scanning your computer for viruses and spyware. On the bottom of the tab you will find information about when the last scan was performed and what type of scan it was. Update – here you will find information on whether this product is up-to-date. You will learn when it was last updated and the versions of the definitions it is using. You can also trigger a manual update. History – here you can access quarantined items, see which items you’ve allowed to run on your PC even if they were identified as malware by Windows Defender, and view a complete list with all the malicious items Windows Defender has detected on your PC. In order to access all these lists and work with them, you need to be signed in as an administrator. Settings – this is the tab where you can turn on the real-time protection service, exclude files, file types, processes, and locations from its scans as well as access a couple of more advanced settings. The only difference between Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) is that, in the “Settings” tab, Microsoft Security Essentials allows you to set when to run scheduled scans while Windows Defender lacks this option.

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• Backpacks and Booth Paint: TechEd 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Arriving in the parking lot of the Orange County Convention Center, I immediately knew I was in the right place. As far as the eye could see, the acres of asphalt were awash in backpacks, quirky (to be kind) outfits, and bad haircuts. This was the place. This was Microsoft Mecca v2012 for geeks and nerds, the Central Florida event of the year, a gathering of high tech professionals whose skills I both greatly respect and, frankly, fear a little. I was wholly and completely out of element, a dork in a vast sea of geek jumbo. It like was wearing dockers and a golf shirt walking into a RenFaire, but one with really crappy costumes and no turkey legs...save those attached to some of the attendees. Of course the corporate whores...errrr, vendors were in place, ready to parlay the convention's fre-nerd-ic energy into millions of dollars by convincing the big-brained and under-sexed in the crowd (i.e., virtually all of them...present company excluded, of course) that their product or service was the only thing standing between them and professional success, industry fame, and clear skin. "With KramTech 2012," they seemed to scream, "you will be THE ROCK STAR of your company's IT department!" As car shows and tattoo parlors learned long ago, Tech companies seem to believe that the best way to attract the attention of this crowd is through the hint of the promise of sex. They recruit and deploy an army of "sales reps" whose primary qualifications appear to be long hair, short skirts, high heels, and a vagina. Unlike their distant cousins in the car and body art industries, however, this sub-species of booth paint (semi-gloss decoration that adds nothing to the substance of the product) seems torn between committing to being all-out sex objects and recognition that they are in the presence of intelligent, discerning people. People who are smart enough to know exactly what these vendors are doing. Also unlike their distant car show and tattoo shop cousins, these young women (what…are there no gay tech professionals who could use some eye candy?) seem to realize that while IT remains a male-dominated field, there are ever-increasing numbers of intelligent, capable, strong professional women – women who’ve battled to make it in this field through hard work and work performance rather than a hard body and performing after work. This is not to say that all of the young female sales reps are there only because of their physical attributes. Many are competent, intelligent, and driven -- not to mention attractive. They're working hard on the front lines of delivering the next generation of technology. The distinction is pretty clear, however, between these young professionals and the booth paint. The former enthusiastically deliver credible information about the products they’re hawking. The latter are positioned in the aisles, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact as they struggle to operate the badge readers. Surprisingly, not all of the women in attendance seemed to object to the objectification of their younger sisters. One IT professional woman who came of age in the industry (mostly in IT marketing) said, “I have no problem with it. I was a ‘booth babe’ for years and it doesn’t bother me at all.” Others, however, weren’t quite so gracious. One woman I spoke with, an IT manager from Cheyenne, Wyoming, said it was demeaning and frankly, as more and more women grow into IT management positions, not a great marketing idea. “Using these young women is, to me, no different than vendors giving out t-shirts to attract attention. It’s sad because it’s still hard for a woman to be respected in the IT field and this just perpetuates the outdated notion that IT is a male-dominated field.” She went on to say that decisions by vendors to employ these young women in this “inappropriate way” could impact her purchasing decisions. “I might be swayed toward a vendor who has women on staff who are intelligent and dynamic rather than the vendors who use the ‘decoration’ girls.” So in many ways, the IT industry is no different than most other industries as it struggles to maximize performance by finding and developing talent – all of the talent, not just the 50% with a penis. Women in IT, like their brethren, struggle to find their niche in the field, to grow professionally, and reach for the brass ring, struggling to overcome obstacles as they climb the mountain of professional success in a never-ending cycle of economic uncertainty. But as (generally) well-educated and highly-trained professionals, they are probably better positioned than those in many other industries. Beside, they’ve got one other advantage over their non-IT counterparts as they attempt their ascent to the summit: They’ve already got the backpacks.

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• Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp - Reading (UK) - October 1-12, 2012

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  REGISTER NOW: Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp Reading, UK, October 1-12, 2012! OPN invites you to join us for a 10-day implementation bootcamp on Oracle ATG Web Commerce in Reading, UK from October 1-12, 2012.This 10-day boot camp is designed to provide partners with hands-on experience and technical training to successfully build and deploy Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Applications. This particular boot camp is focused on helping partners develop the essential skills needed to implement every aspect of an ATG Commerce Application from scratch, (not CRS-based), with a specific goal of enabling experienced Java/J2EE developers with a path towards becoming functional, effective, and contributing members of an ATG implementation team. Built for both new and experienced ATG developers alike, the collaborative nature of this program and its exercises, have proven to be highly effective and extremely valuable in learning the best practices for implementing ATG solutions. Though not required, this bootcamp provides a structured path to earning a Certified Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Specialization! What Is Covered: This boot camp is for Application Developers and Software Architects wanting to gain valuable insight into ATG application development best practices, as well as relevant and applicable implementation experience on projects modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform. The following learning objectives are all critical, and are of equal priority in enabling this role to succeed. This learning boot camp will help with: Building a basic functional transaction-ready ATG Web Commerce 10 Application. Utilizing ATG’s platform features such as scenarios, slots, targeters, user profiles and segments, to create a personalized user experience. Building Nucleus components to support and/or extend application functionality. Understanding the intricacies of ATG order checkout and fulfillment. Specifying, designing and implementing new commerce features in ATG 10. Building a functional commerce application modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform, within an agile-based project team environment and under simulated real-world project conditions. Duration: The Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp is an instructor-led workshop spanning 10 days. Audience: Application Developers Software Architects Prerequisite Training and Environment Requirements: Programming and Markup Experience with Java J2EE, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS Completion of Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Specialist Development Guided Learning Path modules Participants will be required to bring their own laptop that meets the minimum specifications:   64-bit PC and OS (e.g. Windows 7 64-bit) 4GB RAM or more 40GB Hard Disk Space Laptops will require access to the Internet through Remote Desktop via Windows. Agenda Topics: Week 1 – Day 1 through 5 Build a Basic Commerce Application In week one of the boot camp training, we will apply knowledge learned from the ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Guided Learning Path modules, towards building a basic transaction-ready commerce application. There will be little to no lectures delivered in this boot camp, as developers will be fully engaged in ATG Application Development activities and best practices. Developers will work independently on the following lab assignments from day's 1 through 5: Lab Assignments  1 Environment Setup 2 Build a dynamic Home Page 3 Site Authentication 4 Build Customer Registration 5 Display Top Level Categories 6 Display Product Sub-Categories 7 Display Product List Page 8 Display Product Detail Page 9 ATG Inventory 10 Build “Add to Cart” Functionality 11 Build Shopping Cart 12 Build Checkout Page  13 Build Checkout Review Page 14 Create an Order and Build Order Confirmation Page 15 Implement Slots and Targeters for Personalization 16 Implement Pricing and Promotions 17 Order Fulfillment Back to top Week 2 – Day 6 through 10 Team-based Case Project In the second week of the boot camp training, participants will be asked to join a project team that will select a case project for the team to implement. Teams will be able to choose from four of the most common application types developed and deployed on the ATG platform. They are as follows: Hard goods with physical fulfillment, Soft goods with electronic fulfillment, a Service or subscription case example, a Course/Event registration case example. Team projects will have approximately 160 hours of use cases/stories for each team to build (40 hours per developer). Each day's Use Cases/Stories will build upon the prior day's work, and therefore must be fully completed at the end of each day. Please note that this boot camp intends to simulate real-world project conditions, and as such will likely require the need for project teams to possibly work beyond normal business hours. To promote further collaboration and group learning, each team will be asked to present their work and share the methodologies and solutions that they've applied to their cases at the end of each day. Location: Oracle Reading CVC TPC510 Room: Wraysbury Reading, UK 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM  Registration Fee (10 Days): US $3,375 Please click on the following link to REGISTER or  visit the Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp page for more information. Questions: Patrick Ty Partner Enablement, Oracle Commerce Phone: 310.343.7687 Mobile: 310.633.1013 Email: [email protected]

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• Big Data – Various Learning Resources – How to Start with Big Data? – Day 20 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data. In this article we will go over various learning resources related to Big Data. In this series we have covered many of the most essential details about Big Data. At the beginning of this series, I have encouraged readers to send me questions. One of the most popular questions is - “I want to learn more about Big Data. Where can I learn it?” This is indeed a great question as there are plenty of resources out to learn about Big Data and it is indeed difficult to select on one resource to learn Big Data. Hence I decided to write here a few of the very important resources which are related to Big Data. Learn from Pluralsight Pluralsight is a global leader in high-quality online training for hardcore developers.  It has fantastic Big Data Courses and I started to learn about Big Data with the help of Pluralsight. Here are few of the courses which are directly related to Big Data. Big Data: The Big Picture Big Data Analytics with Tableau NoSQL: The Big Picture Understanding NoSQL Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau I encourage all of you start with this video course as they are fantastic fundamentals to learn Big Data. Learn from Apache Resources at Apache are single point the most authentic learning resources. If you want to learn fundamentals and go deep about every aspect of the Big Data, I believe you must understand various concepts in Apache’s library. I am pretty impressed with the documentation and I am personally referencing it every single day when I work with Big Data. I strongly encourage all of you to bookmark following all the links for authentic big data learning. Haddop - The Apache Hadoop® project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. Ambari: A web-based tool for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Apache Hadoop clusters which include support for Hadoop HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, HCatalog, HBase, ZooKeeper, Oozie, Pig and Sqoop. Ambari also provides a dashboard for viewing cluster health such as heat maps and ability to view MapReduce, Pig and Hive applications visually along with features to diagnose their performance characteristics in a user-friendly manner. Avro: A data serialization system. Cassandra: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure. Chukwa: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems. HBase: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables. Hive: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying. Mahout: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library. Pig: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation. ZooKeeper: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. Learn from Vendors One of the biggest issues with about learning Big Data is setting up the environment. Every Big Data vendor has different environment request and there are lots of things require to set up Big Data framework. Many of the users do not start with Big Data as they are afraid about the resources required to set up framework as well as a time commitment. Here Hortonworks have created fantastic learning environment. They have created Sandbox with everything one person needs to learn Big Data and also have provided excellent tutoring along with it. Sandbox comes with a dozen hands-on tutorial that will guide you through the basics of Hadoop as well it contains the Hortonworks Data Platform. I think Hortonworks did a fantastic job building this Sandbox and Tutorial. Though there are plenty of different Big Data Vendors I have decided to list only Hortonworks due to their unique setup. Please leave a comment if there are any other such platform to learn Big Data. I will include them over here as well. Learn from Books There are indeed few good books out there which one can refer to learn Big Data. Here are few good books which I have read. I will update the list as I will learn more. Ethics of Big Data Balancing Risk and Innovation Big Data for Dummies Head First Data Analysis: A Learner’s Guide to Big Numbers, Statistics, and Good Decisions If you search on Amazon there are millions of the books but I think above three books are a great set of books and it will give you great ideas about Big Data. Once you go through above books, you will have a clear idea about what is the next step you should follow in this series. You will be capable enough to make the right decision for yourself. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will wrap up this series of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Windows Azure End to End Examples

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m fascinated by the way people learn. I’m told there are several methods people use to understand new information, from reading to watching, from experiencing to exploring. Personally, I use multiple methods of learning when I encounter a new topic, usually starting with reading a bit about the concepts. I quickly want to put those into practice, however, especially in the technical realm. I immediately look for examples where I can start trying out the concepts. But I often want a “real” example – not just something that represents the concept, but something that is real-world, showing some feature I could actually use. And it’s no different with the Windows Azure platform – I like finding things I can do now, and actually use. So when I started learning Windows Azure, I of course began with the Windows Azure Training Kit – which has lots of examples and labs, presentations and so on. But from there, I wanted more examples I could learn from, and eventually teach others with. I was asked if I would write a few of those up, so here are the ones I use. CodePlex CodePlex is Microsoft’s version of an “Open Source” repository. Anyone can start a project, add code, documentation and more to it and make it available to the world, free of charge, using various licenses as they wish. Microsoft also uses this location for most of the examples we publish, and sample databases for SQL Server. If you search in CodePlex for “Azure”, you’ll come back with a list of projects that folks have posted, including those of us at Microsoft. The source code and documentation are there, so you can learn using actual examples of code that will do what you need. There’s everything from a simple table query to a full project that is sort of a “Corporate Dropbox” that uses Windows Azure Storage. The advantage is that this code is immediately usable. It’s searchable, and you can often find a complete solution to meet your needs. The disadvantage is that the code is pretty specific – it may not cover a huge project like you’re looking for. Also, depending on the author(s), you might not find the documentation level you want. Link: http://azureexamples.codeplex.com/site/search?query=Azure&ac=8    Tailspin Microsoft Patterns and Practices is a group here that does an amazing job at sharing standard ways of doing IT – from operations to coding. If you’re not familiar with this resource, make sure you read up on it. Long before I joined Microsoft I used their work in my daily job – saved a ton of time. It has resources not only for Windows Azure but other Microsoft software as well. The Patterns and Practices group also publishes full books – you can buy these, but many are also online for free. There’s an end-to-end example for Windows Azure using a company called “Tailspin”, and the work covers not only the code but the design of the full solution. If you really want to understand the thought that goes into a Platform-as-a-Service solution, this is an excellent resource. The advantages are that this is a book, it’s complete, and it includes a discussion of design decisions. The disadvantage is that it’s a little over a year old – and in “Cloud” years that’s a lot. So many things have changed, improved, and have been added that you need to treat this as a resource, but not the only one. Still, highly recommended. Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728592.aspx Azure Stock Trader Sometimes you need a mix of a CodePlex-style application, and a little more detail on how it was put together. And it would be great if you could actually play with the completed application, to see how it really functions on the actual platform. That’s the Azure Stock Trader application. There’s a place where you can read about the application, and then it’s been published to Windows Azure – the production platform – and you can use it, explore, and see how it performs. I use this application all the time to demonstrate Windows Azure, or a particular part of Windows Azure. The advantage is that this is an end-to-end application, and online as well. The disadvantage is that it takes a bit of self-learning to work through.  Links: Learn it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684 Use it: https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/

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• Write your Tests in RSpec with IronRuby

  - by kazimanzurrashid

  [Note: This is not a continuation of my previous post, treat it as an experiment out in the wild. ] Lets consider the following class, a fictitious Fund Transfer Service: public class FundTransferService : IFundTransferService { private readonly ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService; public FundTransferService(ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService) { this.currencyConvertionService = currencyConvertionService; } public void Transfer(Account fromAccount, Account toAccount, decimal amount) { decimal convertionRate = currencyConvertionService.GetConvertionRate(fromAccount.Currency, toAccount.Currency); decimal convertedAmount = convertionRate * amount; fromAccount.Withdraw(amount); toAccount.Deposit(convertedAmount); } } public class Account { public Account(string currency, decimal balance) { Currency = currency; Balance = balance; } public string Currency { get; private set; } public decimal Balance { get; private set; } public void Deposit(decimal amount) { Balance += amount; } public void Withdraw(decimal amount) { Balance -= amount; } } We can write the spec with MSpec + Moq like the following: public class When_fund_is_transferred { const decimal ConvertionRate = 1.029m; const decimal TransferAmount = 10.0m; const decimal InitialBalance = 100.0m; static Account fromAccount; static Account toAccount; static FundTransferService fundTransferService; Establish context = () => { fromAccount = new Account("USD", InitialBalance); toAccount = new Account("CAD", InitialBalance); var currencyConvertionService = new Moq.Mock<ICurrencyConvertionService>(); currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); fundTransferService = new FundTransferService(currencyConvertionService.Object); }; Because of = () => { fundTransferService.Transfer(fromAccount, toAccount, TransferAmount); }; It should_decrease_from_account_balance = () => { fromAccount.Balance.ShouldBeLessThan(InitialBalance); }; It should_increase_to_account_balance = () => { toAccount.Balance.ShouldBeGreaterThan(InitialBalance); }; } and if you run the spec it will give you a nice little output like the following: When fund is transferred » should decrease from account balance » should increase to account balance 2 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 1.14 seconds (MSpec). Now, lets see how we can write exact spec in RSpec. require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../FundTransfer/bin/Debug/FundTransfer" require "spec" require "caricature" describe "When fund is transferred" do Convertion_Rate = 1.029 Transfer_Amount = 10.0 Initial_Balance = 100.0 before(:all) do @from_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("USD", Initial_Balance) @to_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("CAD", Initial_Balance) currency_convertion_service = Caricature::Isolation.for(FundTransfer::ICurrencyConvertionService) currency_convertion_service.when_receiving(:get_convertion_rate).with(:any, :any).return(Convertion_Rate) fund_transfer_service = FundTransfer::FundTransferService.new(currency_convertion_service) fund_transfer_service.transfer(@from_account, @to_account, Transfer_Amount) end it "should decrease from account balance" do @from_account.balance.should be < Initial_Balance end it "should increase to account balance" do @to_account.balance.should be > Initial_Balance end end I think the above code is self explanatory, treat the require(line 1- 4) statements as the add reference of our visual studio projects, we are adding all the required libraries with this statement. Next, the describe which is a RSpec keyword. The before does exactly the same as NUnit's Setup or MsTest’s TestInitialize attribute, but in the above we are using before(:all) which acts as ClassInitialize of MsTest, that means it will be executed only once before all the test methods. In the before(:all) we are first instantiating the from and to accounts, it is same as creating with the full name (including namespace)  like fromAccount = new FundTransfer.Account(.., ..), next, we are creating a mock object of ICurrencyConvertionService, check that for creating the mock we are not using the Moq like the MSpec version. This is somewhat an interesting issue of IronRuby or maybe the DLR, it seems that it is not possible to use the lambda expression that most of the mocking tools uses in arrange phase in Iron Ruby, like: currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); But the good news is, there is already an excellent mocking tool called Caricature written completely in IronRuby which we can use to mock the .NET classes. May be all the mocking tool providers should give some thought to add the support for the DLR, so that we can use the tool that we are already familiar with. I think the rest of the code is too simple, so I am skipping the explanation. Now, the last thing, how we are going to run it with RSpec, lets first install the required gems. Open you command prompt and type the following: igem sources -a http://gems.github.com This will add the GitHub as gem source. Next type: igem install uuidtools caricature rspec and at last we have to create a batch file so that we can execute it in the Notepad++, create a batch like in the IronRuby bin directory like my previous post and put the following in that batch file: @echo off cls call spec %1 --format specdoc pause Next, add a run menu and shortcut in the Notepad++ like my previous post. Now when we run it it will show the following output: When fund is transferred - should decrease from account balance - should increase to account balance Finished in 0.332042 seconds 2 examples, 0 failures Press any key to continue . . . You will complete code of this post in the bottom. That's it for today. Download: RSpecIntegration.zip

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• Union,Except and Intersect operator in Linq

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  While developing a windows service using Linq-To-SQL i was in need of something that will intersect the two list and return a list with the result. After searching on net i have found three great use full operators in Linq Union,Except and Intersect. Here are explanation of each operator. Union Operator: Union operator will combine elements of both entity and return result as third new entities. Except Operator: Except operator will remove elements of first entities which elements are there in second entities and will return as third new entities. Intersect Operator: As name suggest it will return common elements of both entities and return result as new entities. Let’s take a simple console application as  a example where i have used two string array and applied the three operator one by one and print the result using Console.Writeline. Here is the code for that. C#, using GeSHi 1.0.8.6 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;     namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             string[] a = { "a", "b", "c", "d" };             string[] b = { "d","e","f","g"};               var UnResult = a.Union(b);             Console.WriteLine("Union Result");               foreach (string s in UnResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);                          }               var ExResult = a.Except(b);             Console.WriteLine("Except Result");             foreach (string s in ExResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);             }               var InResult = a.Intersect(b);             Console.WriteLine("Intersect Result");             foreach (string s in InResult)             {                 Console.WriteLine(s);             }             Console.ReadLine();                        }          } }   Parsed in 0.022 seconds at 45.54 KB/s Here is the output of console application as Expected. Hope this will help you.. Technorati Tags: Linq,Except,InterSect,Union,C#

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• Responsible BI for Excel, Even for Older Versions

  - by andrewbrust

  On Wednesday, I will have the honor of co-presenting, for both The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) and the New York Technology Council. on the subject of Excel and BI. My co-presenter will be none other than Bill Baker, who was a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and, essentially, the father of BI at that company.  Details on the events are here and here. We'll be talking about PowerPivot, of course, but that's not all. Probably even more important than any one product, will be our discussion of whether the usual characterization of Excel as the nemesis of IT, the guilty pleasure of business users and the antithesis of formal BI is really valid and/or hopelessly intractable. Without giving away our punchline, I'll tell you that we are much more optimistic than that. There are huge upsides to Excel and while there are real dangers to using it in the BI space, there are standards and practices you can employ to ensure Excel is used responsibly. And when those practices are followed, Excel becomes quite powerful indeed. One of the keys to this is using Excel as a data consumer rather than data storage mechanism. Caching data in Excel is OK, but only if that data is (a) not modified and (b) configured for automated periodic refresh. PowerPivot meets both criteria -- it stores a read-only copy of your data in the form of a model, and once workbook containing a PowerPivot model is published to SharePoint, it can be configured for scheduled data refresh, on the server, requiring no user intervention whatsoever. Data refresh is a bit like hard drive backup: it will only happen reliably if it's automated, and super-easy to configure. PowerPivot hits a real home run here (as does Windows Home Server for PC backup, but I digress). The thing about PowerPivot is that it's an add-in for Excel 2010. What if you're not planning to go to that new version for quite a while? What if you’ve just deployed Office 2007 in your organization? What if you're still on Office 2003, or an even earlier version? What can you do immediately to share data responsibly and easily? As it turns out, there's a feature in Excel that's been around for quite a while, that can help: Web Queries.  The Web Query feature was introduced, ostensibly, to allow Excel to pull data in from Internet Web pages…for example, data in a stock quote history table will come in nicely, as will any data in a Web page that is displayed in an HTML table.  To use the feature In Excel 2007 or 2010, click the Data Tab or the ribbon and click the “From Web” button towards the left; in older versions use the corresponding option in  the menu or  toolbars.  Next, paste a URL into the resulting dialog box and tap Enter or click the Go button.  A preview of the Web page will come up, and the dialog will allow you to select the specific table within the page whose data you’d like to import.  Here’s an example: Now just click the table, click the Import button, and the Import Data dialog appears.  You can simply click OK to bring in your data or you can first click the Properties… button and configure the data import to be refreshed at an interval in minutes that you select.  Now your data’s in the spreadsheet and ready to worked with: Your data may be vulnerable to modification, but if you’ve set up the data refresh, any accidental or malicious changes will be corrected in time anyway. The thing about this feature is that it’s most useful not for public Web pages, but for pages behind the firewall.  In effect, the Web Query feature provides an incredibly easy way to consume data in Excel that’s “published” from an application.  Users just need a URL.  They don’t need to know server and database names and since the data is read-only, providing credentials may be unnecessary, or can be handled using integrated security.  If that’s not good enough, the Web Query can be saved to a special .iqy file, which can be edited to provide POST parameter data. The only requirement is that the data must be provided in an HTML table, with the first row providing the column names.  From an ASP.NET project, it couldn’t be easier: a simple bound GridView control is totally compatible.  Use a data source control with it, and you don’t even have to write any code.  Users can link to pages that are part of an application’s UI, or developers can create pages that are specially designed for the purpose of providing an interface to the Web Query import feature.  And none of this is Microsoft- or .NET-specific.  You can create pages in any language you want (PHP comes to mind) that output the result set of a query in HTML table format, and then consume that data in a Web Query.  Then build PivotTables and charts on the data, and in Excel 2007 or 2010 you can use conditional formatting to create scorecards and dashboards. This strategy allows you to create pages that function quite similarly to the OData XML feeds rendered when .NET developers create an “Astoria” WCF Data Service.  And while it’s cool that PowerPivot and Excel 2010 can import such OData feeds, it’s good to know that older versions of Excel can function in a similar fashion, and can consume data produced by virtually any Web development platform. As a final matter, instead of just telling you that “older versions” of Excel support this feature, I’ll be more specific.  To discover what the first version of Excel was to support Web queries, go to http://bit.ly/OldSchoolXL.

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• The Oracle Retail Week Awards - in review

  - by user801960

  The Oracle Retail Week Awards 2012 were another great success, building on the legacy of previous award ceremonies. Over 1,600 of the UK's top retailers gathered at the Grosvenor House Hotel and many of Europe's top retail leaders attended the prestigious Oracle Retail VIP Reception in the Grosvenor House Hotel's Red Bar. Over the years the Oracle Retail Week Awards have become a rallying point for the morale of the retail industry, and each nominated retailer served as a demonstration that the industry is fighting fit. It was an honour to speak to so many figureheads of UK - and global - retail. All of us at Oracle Retail would like to congratulate both the winners and the nominees for the awards. Retail is a cornerstone of the economy and it was inspiring to see so many outstanding demonstrations of innovation and dedication in the entries. Winners 2012   The Market Force Customer Service Initiative of the Year Winner: Dixons Retail: Knowhow Highly Commended: Hughes Electrical: Digital Switchover     The Deloitte Employer of the Year Winner: Morrisons     Growing Retailer of the Year Winner: Hallett Retail - The Concessions People Highly Commended: Blue Inc     The TCC Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year Winner: Sainsbury's: Feed your Family for £50     The Brandbank Multichannel Retailer of the Year Winner: Debenhams Highly Commended: Halfords     The Ashton Partnership Product Innovation of the Year Winner: Argos: Chad Valley Highly Commended: Halfords: Private label bikes     The RR Donnelley Pure-play Online Retailer of the Year Winner: Wiggle     The Hitachi Consulting Responsible Retailer of the Year Winner: B&Q: One Planet Home     The CA Technologies Retail Technology Initiative of the Year Winner: Oasis: Argyll Street flagship launch with iPad PoS     The Premier Tax Free Speciality Retailer of the Year Winner: Holland & Barrett     Store Design of the Year Winner: Next Home and Garden, Shoreham, Sussex Highly Commended: Dixons Retail, Black concept store, Birmingham Bullring     Store Manager of the Year Winner: Ian Allcock, Homebase, Aylesford Highly Commended: Darren Parfitt, Boots UK, Melton Mowbray Health Centre     The Wates Retail Destination of the Year Winner: Westfield, Stratford     The AlixPartners Emerging Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Catriona Marshall, HobbyCraft, Chief Executive     The Wipro Retail International Retailer of the Year Winner: Apple     The Clarity Search Retail Leader of the Year Winner: Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher     The Oracle Retailer of the Year Winner: Burberry     Outstanding Contribution to Retail Winner: Lord Harris of Peckham     Oracle Retail and "Your Experience Platform" Technology is the key to providing that differentiated retail experience. More specifically, it is what we at Oracle call ‘the experience platform’ - a set of integrated, cross-channel business technology solutions, selected and operated by a retail business and IT team, and deployed in accordance with that organisation’s individual strategy and processes. This business systems architecture simultaneously: Connects customer interactions across all channels and touchpoints, and every customer lifecycle phase to provide a differentiated customer experience that meets consumers’ needs and expectations. Delivers actionable insight that enables smarter decisions in planning, forecasting, merchandising, supply chain management, marketing, etc; Optimises operations to align every aspect of the retail business to gain efficiencies and economies, to align KPIs to eliminate strategic conflicts, and at the same time be working in support of customer priorities.   Working in unison, these three goals not only help retailers to successfully navigate the challenges of today but also to focus on delivering that personalised customer experience based on differentiated products, pricing, services and interactions that will help you to gain market share and grow sales.  

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• GlassFish Clustering with DCOM on Windows

  - by ByronNevins

  DCOM - Distributed COM, a Microsoft protocol for communicating with Windows machines. Why use DCOM? In GlassFish 3.1 SSH is used as the standard way to run commands on remote nodes for clustering.  It is very difficult for users to get SSH configured properly on Windows.  SSH does not come with Windows so we have to depend on third party tools.  And then the user is forced to install and configure these tools -- which can be tricky. DCOM is available on all supported platforms.  It is built-in to Windows. The idea is to use DCOM to communicate with remote Windows nodes.  This has the huge advantage that the user has to do minimal, if any, configuration on the Windows nodes. Implementation HighlightsTwo open Source Libraries have been added to GlassFish: Jcifs – a SAMBA implementation in Java J-interop – A Java implementation for making DCOM calls to remote Windows computers.   Note that any supported platform can use DCOM to work with Windows nodes -- not just Windows.E.g. you can have a Linux DAS work with Windows remote instances.All existing SSH commands now have a corresponding DCOM command – except for setup-ssh which isn’t needed for DCOM.  validate-dcom is an all new command. New DCOM Commands create-node-dcom delete-node-dcom install-node-dcom list-nodes-dcom ping-node-dcom uninstall-node-dcom update-node-dcom validate-dcom setup-local-dcom (This is only available via Update Center for GlassFish 3.1.2) These commands are in-place in the trunk (4.0).  And in the branch (3.1.2) Windows Configuration Challenges There are an infinite number of possible configurations of Windows if you look at it as a combination of main release, service-pack, special drivers, software, configuration etc.  Later versions of Windows err on the side of tightening security be default.  This means that the Windows host may need to have configuration changes made.These configuration changes mostly need to be made by the user.  setup-local-dcom will assist you in making required changes to the Windows Registry.  See the reference blogs for details. The validate-dcom Command validate-dcom is a crucial command.  It should be run before any other commands.  If it does not run successfully then there is no point in running other commands.The validate-dcom command must be used from a DAS machine to test a different Windows machine.  If  validate-dcom runs successfully you can be confident that all the DCOM commands will work.  Conversely, the opposite is also true:  If validate-dcom fails, then no DCOM commands will work. What validate-dcom does Verify that the remote host is not the local machine. Resolves the remote host name Checks that the remote DCOM port is being listened on (135, 139) Checks that the remote host’s File Sharing is enabled (port 445) It copies a file (a script) to the remote host to verify that SAMBA is working and authorization is correct It runs a script that it copied on-the-fly to the remote host. Tips and Tricks The bread and butter commands that use DCOM are existing commands like create-instance, start-instance etc.   All of the commands that have dcom in their name are for dealing with the actual nodes. The way the software works is to call asadmin.bat on the remote machine and run a command.  This means that you can track these commands easily on the remote machine with the usual tools.  E.g. using AS_LOGFILE, looking at log files, etc.  It’s easy to attach a debugger to the remote asadmin process, “just in time”, if necessary. How to debug the remote commands:Edit the asadmin.bat file that is in the glassfish/bin folder.  Use glassfish/lib/nadmin.bat in GlassFish 4.0+Add these options to the java call:-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=1234  Now if you run, say start-instance on DAS, you can attach your debugger, at your leisure, to the remote machines port 1234.  It will be running start-local-instance and patiently waiting for you to attach.

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• TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

  - by Tarun Arora

  Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp   Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically   1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp  Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application   Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret;  public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"];  return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked   3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4:   5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8:   9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12:   13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14:   15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16:   17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19:   20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21:   22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25:   26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31:   32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34:   35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39:   40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName,  "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: }   The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible!   Share this post :

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• Online Password Security Tactics

  - by BuckWoody

  Recently two more large databases were attacked and compromised, one at the popular Gawker Media sites and the other at McDonald’s. Every time this kind of thing happens (which is FAR too often) it should remind the technical professional to ensure that they secure their systems correctly. If you write software that stores passwords, it should be heavily encrypted, and not human-readable in any storage. I advocate a different store for the login and password, so that if one is compromised, the other is not. I also advocate that you set a bit flag when a user changes their password, and send out a reminder to change passwords if that bit isn’t changed every three or six months.    But this post is about the *other* side – what to do to secure your own passwords, especially those you use online, either in a cloud service or at a provider. While you’re not in control of these breaches, there are some things you can do to help protect yourself. Most of these are obvious, but they contain a few little twists that make the process easier.   Use Complex Passwords This is easily stated, and probably one of the most un-heeded piece of advice. There are three main concepts here: ·         Don’t use a dictionary-based word ·         Use mixed case ·         Use punctuation, special characters and so on   So this: password Isn’t nearly as safe as this: P@ssw03d   Of course, this only helps if the site that stores your password encrypts it. Gawker does, so theoretically if you had the second password you’re in better shape, at least, than the first. Dictionary words are quickly broken, regardless of the encryption, so the more unusual characters you use, and the farther away from the dictionary words you get, the better.   Of course, this doesn’t help, not even a little, if the site stores the passwords in clear text, or the key to their encryption is broken. In that case…   Use a Different Password at Every Site What? I have hundreds of sites! Are you kidding me? Nope – I’m not. If you use the same password at every site, when a site gets attacked, the attacker will store your name and password value for attacks at other sites. So the only safe thing to do is to use different names or passwords (or both) at each site. Of course, most sites use your e-mail as a username, so you’re kind of hosed there. So even though you have hundreds of sites you visit, you need to have at least a different password at each site.   But it’s easier than you think – if you use an algorithm.   What I’m describing is to pick a “root” password, and then modify that based on the site or purpose. That way, if the site is compromised, you can still use that root password for the other sites.   Let’s take that second password: P@ssw03d   And now you can append, prepend or intersperse that password with other characters to make it unique to the site. That way you can easily remember the root password, but make it unique to the site. For instance, perhaps you read a lot of information on Gawker – how about these:   P@ssw03dRead ReadP@ssw03d PR@esasdw03d   If you have lots of sites, tracking even this can be difficult, so I recommend you use password software such as Password Safe or some other tool to have a secure database of your passwords at each site. DO NOT store this on the web. DO NOT use an Office document (Microsoft or otherwise) that is “encrypted” – the encryption office automation packages use is very trivial, and easily broken. A quick web search for tools to do that should show you how bad a choice this is.   Change Your Password on a Schedule I know. It’s a real pain. And it doesn’t seem worth it…until your account gets hacked. A quick note here – whenever a site gets hacked (and I find out about it) I change the password at that site immediately (or quit doing business with them) and then change the root password on every site, as quickly as I can.   If you follow the tip above, it’s not as hard. Just add another number, year, month, day, something like that into the mix. It’s not unlike making a Primary Key in an RDBMS.   P@ssw03dRead10242010   Change the site, and then update your password database. I do this about once a month, on the first or last day, during staff meetings. (J)   If you have other tips, post them here. We can all learn from each other on this.

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• What should you bring to the table as a Software Architect?

  - by Ahmad Mageed

  There have been many questions with good answers about the role of a Software Architect (SA) on StackOverflow and Programmers SE. I am trying to ask a slightly more focused question than those. The very definition of a SA is broad so for the sake of this question let's define a SA as follows: A Software Architect guides the overall design of a project, gets involved with coding efforts, conducts code reviews, and selects the technologies to be used. In other words, I am not talking about managerial rest and vest at the crest (further rhyming words elided) types of SAs. If I were to pursue any type of SA position I don't want to be away from coding. I might sacrifice some time to interface with clients and Business Analysts etc., but I am still technically involved and I'm not just aware of what's going on through meetings. With these points in mind, what should a SA bring to the table? Should they come in with a mentality of "laying down the law" (so to speak) and enforcing the usage of certain tools to fit "their way," i.e., coding guidelines, source control, patterns, UML documentation, etc.? Or should they specify initial direction and strategy then be laid back and jump in as needed to correct the ship's direction? Depending on the organization this might not work. An SA who relies on TFS to enforce everything may struggle to implement their plan at an employer that only uses StarTeam. Similarly, an SA needs to be flexible depending on the stage of the project. If it's a fresh project they have more choices, whereas they might have less for existing projects. Here are some SA stories I have experienced as a way of sharing some background in hopes that answers to my questions might also shed some light on these issues: I've worked with an SA who code reviewed literally every single line of code of the team. The SA would do this for not just our project but other projects in the organization (imagine the time spent on this). At first it was useful to enforce certain standards, but later it became crippling. FxCop was how the SA would find issues. Don't get me wrong, it was a good way to teach junior developers and force them to think of the consequences of their chosen approach, but for senior developers it was seen as somewhat draconian. One particular SA was against the use of a certain library, claiming it was slow. This forced us to write tons of code to achieve things differently while the other library would've saved us a lot of time. Fast forward to the last month of the project and the clients were complaining about performance. The only solution was to change certain functionality to use the originally ignored approach despite early warnings from the devs. By that point a lot of code was thrown out and not reusable, leading to overtime and stress. Sadly the estimates used for the project were based on the old approach which my project was forbidden from using so it wasn't an appropriate indicator for estimation. I would hear the PM say "we've done this before," when in reality they had not since we were using a new library and the devs working on it were not the same devs used on the old project. The SA who would enforce the usage of DTOs, DOs, BOs, Service layers and so on for all projects. New devs had to learn this architecture and the SA adamantly enforced usage guidelines. Exceptions to usage guidelines were made when it was absolutely difficult to follow the guidelines. The SA was grounded in their approach. Classes for DTOs and all CRUD operations were generated via CodeSmith and database schemas were another similar ball of wax. However, having used this setup everywhere, the SA was not open to new technologies such as LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. I am not using this post as a platform for venting. There were positive and negative aspects to my experiences with the SA stories mentioned above. My questions boil down to: What should an SA bring to the table? How can they strike a balance in their decision making? Should one approach an SA job (as defined earlier) with the mentality that they must enforce certain ground rules? Anything else to consider? Thanks! I'm sure these job tasks are easily extended to people who are senior devs or technical leads, so feel free to answer at that capacity as well.

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• Announcing the New Windows Azure Web Sites Shared Scaling Tier

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Windows Azure Web Sites has added a new pricing tier that will solve the #1 blocker for the web development community. The shared tier now supports custom domain names mapped to shared-instance web sites. This post will outline the plan changes and elaborate on how the new pricing model makes Windows Azure Web Sites an even richer option for web development shops of all sizes. Free Shared Reserved # of Sites 10 100 100 Egress 165MB/Day 5GB/Month Included 5GB/Month Included Storage 1GB 1GB 10GB Throttling CPU/Memory/Egress CPU/Memory Unlimited Price Free $.02/hr per site, per instance $.08/hr per core Setting the Stage In June, we released the first public preview of Windows Azure Web Sites, which gave web developers a great platform on which to get web sites running using their web development framework of choice. PHP, Node.js, classic ASP, and ASP.NET developers can all utilize the Windows Azure platform to create and launch their web sites. Likewise, these developers have a series of data storage options using Windows Azure SQL Databases, MySQL, or Windows Azure Storage. The Windows Azure Web Sites free offer enabled startups to get their site up and running on Windows Azure with a minimal investment, and with multiple deployment and continuous integration features such as Git, Team Foundation Services, FTP, and Web Deploy.  The response to the Windows Azure Web Sites offer has been overwhelmingly positive. Since the addition of the service on June 12th, tens of thousands of web sites have been deployed to Windows Azure and the volume of adoption is increasing every week. Preview Feedback In spite of the growth and success of the product, the community has had questions about features lacking in the free preview offer. The main question web developers asked regarding Windows Azure Web Sites relates to the lack of the free offer’s support for domain name mapping. During the preview launch period, customer feedback made it obvious that the lack of domain name mapping support was an area of concern. We’re happy to announce that this #1 request has been delivered as a feature of the new shared plan. New Shared Tier Portal Features In the screen shot below, the “Scale” tab in the portal shows the new tiers – Free, Shared, and Reserved – and gives the user the ability to quickly move any of their free web sites into the shared tier. With a single mouse-click, the user can move their site into the shared tier. Once a site has been moved into the shared tier, a new Manage Domains button appears in the bottom action bar of the Windows Azure Portal giving site owners the ability to manage their domain names for a shared site. This button brings up the domain-management dialog, which can be used to enter in a specific domain name that will be mapped to the Windows Azure Web Site. Shared Tier Benefits Startups and large web agencies will both benefit from this plan change. Here are a few examples of scenarios which fit the new pricing model: Startups no longer have to select the reserved plan to map domain names to their sites. Instead, they can use the free option to develop their sites and choose on a site-by-site basis which sites they elect to move into the shared plan, paying only for the sites that are finished and ready to be domain-mapped Agencies who manage dozens of sites will realize a lower cost of ownership over the long term by moving their sites into reserved mode. Once multi-site companies reach a certain price point in the shared tier, it is much more cost-effective to move sites to a reserved tier.  Long-term, it’s easy to see how the new Windows Azure Web Sites shared pricing tier makes Windows Azure Web Sites it a great choice for both startups and agency customers, as it enables rapid growth and upgrades while keeping the cost to a minimum. Large agencies will be able to have all of their sites in their own instances, and startups will have the capability to scale up to multiple-shared instances for minimal cost and eventually move to reserved instances without worrying about the need to incur continually additional costs. Customers can feel confident they have the power of the Microsoft Windows Azure brand and our world-class support, at prices competitive in the market. Plus, in addition to realizing the cost savings, they’ll have the whole family of Windows Azure features available. Continuous Deployment from GitHub and CodePlex Along with this new announcement are two other exciting new features. I’m proud to announce that web developers can now publish their web sites directly from CodePlex or GitHub.com repositories. Once connections are established between these services and your web sites, Windows Azure will automatically be notified every time a check-in occurs. This will then trigger Windows Azure to pull the source and compile/deploy the new version of your app to your web site automatically. Walk-through videos on how to perform these functions are below: Publishing to an Azure Web Site from CodePlex Publishing to an Azure Web Site from GitHub.com These changes, as well as the enhancements to the reserved plan model, make Windows Azure Web Sites a truly competitive hosting option. It’s never been easier or cheaper for a web developer to get up and running. Check out the free Windows Azure web site offering and see for yourself. Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• Top Reasons You Need A User Engagement Platform

  - by Michael Snow

  Guest post by: Amit Sircar, Senior Sales Consultant, Oracle Deliver complex enterprise functionality through a simple intuitive and unified User Interface (UI) The modern enterprise contains a wide range of applications that are used to manage the business and drive competitive advantages. Organizations respond by creating a complex structure that results in a functional and management grouping of users. Each of these groups of users requires access to multiple applications and information sources in order to perform their job functions. This leads to the lack of a unified view of enterprise information, inconsistent user interfaces and disjointed security. To be effective, portals must be designed from the end-user perspective, enabling the user to accomplish as many tasks as possible while visiting the fewest number of portals. This requires rethinking the way that portals are built, moving from a functional business unit perspective to a user-focused, process-oriented point of view. Oracle WebCenter provides the Common User Experience Architecture that allows organizations to seamlessly present a unified view of enterprise information tailored to a particular user’s role and preferences. This architecture provides the best practices, design patterns and delivery mechanism for myriad services, applications, and data sources.  In order to serve as a primary system of access, Oracle WebCenter also provides access to unstructured content and to other users via integrated search, service-oriented artifacts, content management, and collaboration tools. Provide a modern and engaging experience without modifying the core business application Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, forums or social media sites are having a profound impact in the public internet.  These technologies can be leveraged by enterprises to add significant value to the business. Organizations need to integrate these technologies directly into their business applications while continuing to meet their security and governance needs. To deliver richer connections and become a more agile and intelligent business, WebCenter provides an enterprise portal platform that contains pre-integrated, standards-based Enterprise 2.0 services. These Enterprise 2.0 services can be easily accessed, integrated and utilized by users. By giving users the ability to use and integrate Enterprise 2.0 services such as tags, links, wikis, activities, blogs or social networking directly with their portals and applications, they are empowered to make richer connections, optimize their productivity, and ultimately increase the value of their applications. Foster a collaborative experience The organizational workplace has undergone a major change in the last decade. With increasing globalization and a distributed workforce, project teams may be physically separated by large distances. Online collaboration technologies are becoming a critical resource to enable virtual teams to share information and work together effectively. Oracle WebCenter delivers dynamic business communities with rich Services to empower teams to quickly and efficiently manage their information, applications, projects, and people without requiring IT assistance. It brings together the latest technology around Enterprise 2.0 and social computing, communities, personal productivity, and ad-hoc team interactions without any development effort. It enables the sharing and collaboration on team content, focusing an organization’s valuable resources on solving business problems, tapping into new ideas, and reducing time-to-market. Mobile Support The traditional workplace dynamics that required employees to access their work applications from their desktops have undergone a fundamental shift. Employees were used to primarily working from company offices and utilized an IT-issued computer for performing their job functions. With the introduction of flexible work hours and the growth of remote workers, more and more employees need the ability to remain productive even when they do not have access to a computer via the use of tablets and smartphones.  In addition, customers and citizens have come to expect 24x7 access to resources and websites from wherever they are located. Tablets and smartphones have empowered everyone to quickly access services they need anytime and from any place.  WebCenter provides out of the box capabilities to deliver the mobile experience in a seamless manner. Seeded device profiles and toolkits within WebCenter can be used to render the same web pages into multiple target devices such iPads, iPhones and android devices. Web designers can preview the portal using the built in simulator, make necessary updates and then deploy their UI design for the targeted device. Conclusion The competitive economy and resource constraints facing organizations today require them to find ways to make their applications, portals and Web sites more agile and intelligent and their knowledge workers more productive no matter where they are located. Organizations need to provide faster access to relevant information and resources, enhance existing applications and business processes with rich Enterprise 2.0 services, and seamlessly deliver content to mobile platforms. Oracle WebCenter successfully meets these challenges by providing the modern user experience platform for the enterprise and the Web.

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• So what are zones really?

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  There is a (not so) particular kind of shape in Orchard: zones. Functionally, zones are places where other shapes can render. There are top-level zones, the ones defined on Layout, where widgets typically go, and there are local zones that can be defined anywhere. These local zones are what you target in placement.info. Creating a zone is easy because it really is just an empty shape. Most themes include a helper for it: Func<dynamic, dynamic> Zone = x => Display(x); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } With this helper, you can create a zone by simply writing: @Zone(Model.Header) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Let's deconstruct what's happening here with that weird Lambda. In the Layout template where we are working, the Model is the Layout shape itself, so Model.Header is really creating a new Header shape under Layout, or getting a reference to it if it already exists. The Zone function is then called on that object, which is equivalent to calling Display. In other words, you could have just written the following to get the exact same effect: @Display(Model.Header) The Zone helper function only exists to make the intent very explicit. Now here's something interesting: while this works in the Layout template, you can also make it work from any deeper-nested template and still create top-level zones. The difference is that wherever you are, Model is not the layout anymore so you need to access it in a different way: @Display(WorkContext.Layout.Header) This is still doing the exact same thing as above. One thing to know is that for top-level zones to be usable from the widget editing UI, you need one more thing, which is to specify it in the theme's manifest: Name: Contoso Author: The Orchard Team Description: A subtle and simple CMS themeVersion: 1.1 Tags: business, cms, modern, simple, subtle, product, service Website: http://www.orchardproject.net Zones: Header, Navigation, HomeFeaturedImage, HomeFeaturedHeadline, Messages, Content, ContentAside, TripelFirst, TripelSecond, TripelThird, Footer Local zones are just ordinary shapes like global zones, the only difference being that they are created on a deeper shape than layout. For example, in Content.cshtml, you can find our good old code fro creating a header zone: @Display(Model.Header) The difference here is that Model is no longer the Layout shape, so that zone will be local. The name of that local zone is what you specify in placement.info, for example: <Place Parts_Common_Metadata_Summary="Header:1"/> Now here's the really interesting part: zones do not even know that they are zones, and in fact any shape can be substituted. That means that if you want to add new shapes to the shape that some part has been emitting from its driver for example, you can absolutely do that. And because zones are so barebones as shapes go, they can be created the first time they are accessed. This is what enables us to add shapes into a zone before the code that you would think creates it has even run. For example, in the Layout.cshtml template in TheThemeMachine, the BadgeOfHonor shape is being injected into the Footer zone on line 47, even though that zone will really be "created" on line 168.

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• In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

  - by andrewbrust

  The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices,  There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype.  We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there.  They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad.  The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit  much. Microsoft was in the news too.  It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet.  That’s a bit much too.  If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft.  Then maybe they could have kept the product alive.  Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents.  And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products.  Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google?  Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed.  Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network.  Google backing down?  That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP.  Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system.  HP also killed its own Slate initiative.  Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad.  I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better,  And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi.  Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week.  It killed a project and a close partner did likewise.  Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device.  This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system.  I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today.  If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much.  And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

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• Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, Part 2

  - by [email protected]

  In my last post, Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, we explored using DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL and DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL to enable moving a model from one system to another. In this post, we'll look at two distributed scenarios that make use of this capability and a tip for easily moving models from one machine to another using only Oracle Database, not an external file transport mechanism, such as FTP. The first scenario, consider a company with geographically distributed business units, each collecting and managing their data locally for the products they sell. Each business unit has in-house data analysts that build models to predict which products to recommend to customers in their space. A central telemarketing business unit also uses these models to score new customers locally using data collected over the phone. Since the models recommend different products, each customer is scored using each model. This is depicted in Figure 1.Figure 1: Target instance importing multiple remote models for local scoring In the second scenario, consider multiple hospitals that collect data on patients with certain types of cancer. The data collection is standardized, so each hospital collects the same patient demographic and other health / tumor data, along with the clinical diagnosis. Instead of each hospital building it's own models, the data is pooled at a central data analysis lab where a predictive model is built. Once completed, the model is distributed to hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices who can score patient data locally.Figure 2: Multiple target instances importing the same model from a source instance for local scoring Since this blog focuses on model export and import, we'll only discuss what is necessary to move a model from one database to another. Here, we use the package DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER, which can move files between Oracle databases. The script is fairly straightforward, but requires setting up a database link and directory objects. We saw how to create directory objects in the previous post. To create a database link to the source database from the target, we can use, for example: create database link SOURCE1_LINK connect to <schema> identified by <password> using 'SOURCE1'; Note that 'SOURCE1' refers to the service name of the remote database entry in your tnsnames.ora file. From SQL*Plus, first connect to the remote database and export the model. Note that the model_file_name does not include the .dmp extension. This is because export_model appends "01" to this name.  Next, connect to the local database and invoke DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE and import the model. Note that "01" is eliminated in the target system file name.  connect <source_schema>/<password>@SOURCE1_LINK; BEGIN  DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                                 'name =''MY_MINING_MODEL'''); END; connect <target_schema>/<password>; BEGIN  DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE ('MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '01.dmp',                               'SOURCE1_LINK',                               'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp' );  DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT'); END; To clean up afterward, you may want to drop the exported .dmp file at the source and the transferred file at the target. For example, utl_file.fremove('&directory_name', '&model_file_name' || '.dmp');

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• Silverlight Cream for December 18, 2010 -- #1012

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mark Monster, Kevin Dockx, Jeremy Likness(-2-,-3-), Timmy Kokke, Den Delimarsky, Mike Snow, Samuel Jack(-2-), and Renuka Prasad(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Trigger a Storyboard on ViewModel changes" Mark Monster WP7: "Microsoft Push Notification in Windows Phone 7" Renuka Prasad Shoutouts: SilverlightGal sent me the link to The Silverlight Dossier ... I think it's a pretty good start... additions I'd like to see are ways to submit to the various areas. Michael Crump put up a contest that runs from now to January 1st... Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!... pretty cool, Michael! If you visit WynApse.com, you'll see I have a subscription to LearnVisualStudio.net... and now they have posted a batch of WP7 videos... 64 of them to be exact... wow!: New video series From SilverlightCream.com: Trigger a Storyboard on ViewModel changes Mark Monster has a great post up about triggering Storyboard on ViewModel changes using the DataTrigger from Blend... cool stuff, and you can also do GoToStateAction or other actions or build yourowndang Trigger Action... fun awaits! ... sorry it took a while to post, Mark... been a tad overloaded here! Working with the Silverlight Rich Text Box control Kevin Dockx has had a post up for a while at SilverlightShow where he takes a good look at the RichText control and it's various capabilities, including source so you can give it a dance yourself. Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 3: Custom Panel and Listbox Jeremy Likness's part 3 of his Personal Web Page lessons learned is covering the tres-cool 3D Panel he did... and he's got it all explained out... building from scratch via a custom panel and a Listbox control... A Silverlight MVVM Feed Reader from Scratch in 30 Minutes Jeremy Likness has a video tutorial showing building an MVVM/Silverlight feedreader in 30 minutes ... plus a couple mods that he noticed after the fact... beat that HTML5 :) Jounce Part 8: Raising Property Changed In Jeremy Likness's latest post, he has number 8 in his series on his MVVM platform, Jounce. This time he's explaining the property changed notification, has a very cool way of doing it, and some interesting comments from readers. Dependency Injection, MVVM, Ninject and Silverlight Timmy Kokke has a great tutorial up with associated demo project on Dependency Injection in MVVM and Silverlight. Some hidden features in the Windows Phone 7 emulator Den Delimarsky shows how to get some of the hidden features on your WP7 emulator like the Call History, Call Settings, and Details about the numbers. Playing sound effects on Windows Phone 7 Mike Snow's latest tip is playing sound effects on your WP7 ... a little bit of XNA here and there, and badabing, badaboom, you got sound! Day 3 of my “Build a Windows Phone 7 game in 3 days” Challenge Samuel Jack has a couple more posts up about his 'Build a WP7 game in 3 Days' challenge... first up is Day 3 from 8:50 to 22:30 ... wow... long day! ... but he's got something good going now... some good external links also Day 3.5 of my “Build a Windows Phone 7 game in 3 days” Challenge Samuel Jack's 3rd day ended with another half-day added on to put on some finishing touches... again, some good external links... and he finished with this Say hello to Simon Squared, my 3.5 day old WP7 Game Microsoft Push Notification in Windows Phone 7 Renuka Prasad has a bunch of material up that I've not been aware of (how did that happen, people??) ... here's the first of a couple of his posts on Code Project ... a very nice tutorial on the Push Notification process... great diagrams and external links. Windows Phone 7 – Toast Notification Using Windows Azure Cloud Service Renuka Prasad has another WP7 post on CodeProject... this one on Toast Notification... and he's using Azure and WCF all rolled into it as well... great diagrams, descriptions and all the code. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Open World Day 3

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me!  I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite.  I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here.  These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority.  They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers.  However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades.  This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily.  It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage.  This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth.  ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure.  The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content.  So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter.   Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer.  I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW.  I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box.  They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well!  Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night.  I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial.  I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop.  One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”!  It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia.  It was good to catch up with him.  As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK.  After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories.  2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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